Avatar: Repercussions
by Mike-045
Summary: Earth is dominated by humans. It always has been. At least, that is what we have been lead to believe. Once, spirits, strange animals, and even people who could shape the four elements to their bidding roamed this planet... And not all of them are gone.
1. Prologue: The Avatar

The helicopters circled overhead, their dark forms imposing a stark contrast to the half-dozen floodlights surrounding the quarantine zone.

This was a relatively empty area-enclosed by several hundred warehouses, and the sparkling ocean on the immediate right, the opaque moon obscured by clouds.

Every man and woman here had a crystal-clear idea of what was going to be done tonight. However, not a word of it was to be spoken to anyone, with the exception of an operation-related officer of higher rank. Not a whisper would be given to families, friends, vague associates alike.

Suddenly, like a flashing poltergeist, the words, "_OMEGA-RANK CLASSIFFICATION. MISSION: RESURECTOR. STAGE 3; CODEWORD: **BEGIN**_," flashed on the Head's-Up-Display's (HUD) of forty-seven soldiers.

Those forty-seven pairs of hands gripped their weapons a tad tighter.

A foreign-looking machine possessing various arms and digits was slowly lowered to the earth by a miniature helicarrier. Stopping at an elevation of roughly twenty feet above sea level, an unseen finger flicked a series of equally unseen switches. The mysterious mechanism slowly began revolving its respective digits, bits, and even bobs.

Over a small amount of time, a strange mix of smoke, fog, and sand began to obscure the machines progress. To counter this, the soldiers clicked their respective HUD's to a thermal viewing.

As could be seen within the mass of debris, the vague outline of a man began to take shape. The gathered people flicked the safeties off of their weapons, the cold gleam of metal shown in the moonlight.

The man was beginning to take a more identifiable shape; he was well built, but obviously old. He possessed a long, ragged beard, which clung with his white hair in a quite unruly state to his body.

The men in the helicarrier began to mumble amongst themselves; this was not whom they were supposed to bring back; this man was much older, and did not fit any of the database descriptions of their intended target.

The tornado revolving around the unknown man's body began to slow down…more of his features became visible. He had the general appearance of a ghost, pale skin and whiter hair. He stood tall, pushing seven feet at the most, from a distant view. His eyes and mouth were closed, his hands open, the palms facing his thighs.

Abruptly, the lashing winds stopped.

The chief scientist, from this point forwards a man that never legally existed, moved to the microphone, and cleared his voice with a scratchy, "_ahem_."

"Do you hear me," he inquired.

The lone figure below did not speak; instead, he simply replied with a curt nod, not visible to most of the scientists above.

The man burst in excitement inside. However, he quickly returned his mindset to the present. As if sensing the man's happiness, the other below lifted his head a few centimeters higher; his nostrils flared in the taking of a breath, and his fingers twitched in, to more than a few soldier's minds, readiness.

His facial features not betraying his terror, he spoke into the device, "Sir, do not move. You cannot see them, but I have men stationed in a controlled perimeter. There is no escape. You have been resurrected to aid my government, which you will do without question." He paused, then took a breath and continued, "If you follow me so far, nod, again."

The man nodded.

"Well, then, tell me, who are you?" The man calmed down; this was all going according to plan.

There was a pause. The man did not move, except for his chest heaving in a breath. Several infrared laser sights danced across said chest, not seen to the naked eye.

Finally, after several minutes of this procession, the man spoke:

"I…am…**Roku**!"

With this, before the head scientist could react, 'Roku' spun his arms in a wide arc, an immense trail of flame issuing behind his hands. The resulting wave of fire knocked nearly every soldier onto his or her backside, and the rest suffered a slight degree of shellshock.

Suddenly, the rear of the helicarrier exploded like so many fireworks, but this was no fanfare. Defenseless scientists were reduced to ashes before their minds registered what had occurred. Delicate equipment, worth millions of taxpayer's dollars, was burned up in seconds. The machine, still dangling from the base of the craft, fell to the ground and erupted into a firestorm from Hell.

Somehow, the head scientist had managed to survive this shocking episode, and observed Roku approach the shattered remains of the helicarrier.

Looking down at him, eyes and mouth glowing unearthly, Roku uttered a simple five-letter sentence:

"And I serve **no man**."

The next moment, the remains of the aircraft burst into an unerring blaze, and the roar of hungry flames drowned out the screams of former occupants.

One soldier, Second Lieutenant Ron Mathers, drunkenly reached for his radio, and carefully tuned it to the mission frequency, "Everyone, open fire, now. Show this bitch no mercy! Colonel, requesting ba-" he didn't have time to finish the request before he and several of his nearby comrades were enveloped in thirsting flames.

Having reduced the dishonorable man to dust, the resurrected Avatar turned his attention to the strange creatures flying above him. They were like the original menace, as having iron plates covering their bodies, and strange wings on the top and tail of themselves. Also like the first beast, these ferried more of the strangely armored people in their gullets.

Showing no fear, Roku clenched his right fist in fury, and punched the air in the general direction of one monstrosity…in the blink of an eye, an incredible vacuum of air appeared around his hand, and a bright blue fireball erupted from it, hissing like so many snakes. The unearthly projectile slammed into the side of the beast, causing screams from the men inside, which abruptly stopped upon the delivery of a second from Roku's left hand to the head of the bizarre animal.

A second beast turned it's maw to face him, and Roku leapt several feet into the air, and delivered a right kick, which, in turn, sent a raging inferno into the face of the monster, killing it and sending the body tumbling to earth.

Sensing something amiss, he curled into a ball as yet another strange object zoomed in front of his face, accompanied by a deafening sound. From what he could discern from it, it was a small ball of steel surrounded by miniature flames invisible to the human eye.

But Roku was a little more than human.

Gathering moisture from the air, Roku sent a series of liquidized darts through the chest and throat of the man to launch this threat at him from a strange, metal staff.

He fell to the ground without a sound.

Suddenly, dozens of similarly armed and armored men stumbled to their feet, and began hurling even more of the…_things_ at Roku.

Before they could reach him, though, he raised a shield of rock and the strange substance covering the ground around his body, and formulated a plan.

The soldiers, those surviving, that is, made a perimeter around the strange shield. Several of the more "jumpy" soldiers fired a shot or two at it, to no avail.

Glancing at his fellows, Corporal Steve Anthers saw that most of them had a strange skin tone-that of a serious sunburn on their hands, faces, and any other revealed skin. One man even looked like he'd stuffed his face in an oven for several hours.

Opening his mouth to speak, the Corporal Anthers didn't have time to start as the shell exploded, shrapnel embedding itself in his stomach before a blast of fire to the face ended his life.

Several others weren't so lucky-one man was struck by pieces of sharpened rock in the throat and legs, rendering him paraplegic and slowly dying of internal bleeding.

Raising his hands above his head, Roku created a disc of fire in his hands, and threw it along the ground, shattering the ground and dislocating one man's leg from the sheer force of it…right before vaporizing him in seconds.

The remaining soldiers dove for cover as spears of rock and ice impaled another twenty of their number.

In a mad attempt at escape, eighteen men mad a dash for the water-maybe they would be safe there-but they would have no such luck. As if coming to greet them, a massive wave rose up to nearly fifteen feet, and then slammed into the concrete pier, drowning both soldier and fire alike, dragging the bodies back to the hungry ocean.

Breathing heavily, wounded in the shoulder and leg, Chief Warrant Officer Hong peered into the darkness-his eyes were fading in and out of blackness, but his hearing was as good as ever. He was lying on his back, and so managed to see the terrifying man known as 'Roku' lift two other survivors to his own eye level-their feet dangling off of the ground. He spoke with them for a moment, and Hong caught one enquiry,

"Are you God?"

There was a deep, tenacious pause, followed by the last words of this Roku:

"I am no god."

An impossibly bright light followed this up, and the two soldiers fell to the ground in a few ounces of ashes.

Silence followed.

Gazing out at the destruction he had unleashed, Roku heard a massive _rumbling_ sound. Turning, he spotted-with a growing internal sense of awe-a massive hunk of metal coming his way. Accompanying it were six more soldiers, in black fatigues with face-obscuring masks. They walked three on each side.

The beast lowered an obstruction on its "head" towards Roku, the tip of it stopping about eight feet from his face. The soldiers, almost simultaneously, raised their weapons to Roku's body, and he heard a distinctive _clicking_.

Before any one of the men could make a move, Roku had already gone through with his.

A pillar of rock lifted the tank into the air, jettisoning it's living cargo, and the soldiers made a futile attempt to open fire on Roku…before the three on his left were blown off of their feet and into the wind by an absurdly powerful gust.

Meanwhile, the tank had fallen to the ground with an incredible thump, sending two of the other men to sprawl to their knees in shock.

However, Roku heard a loud, **boom** from the direction of the sixth.

Looking down, he felt an emptiness to accompany the hole in his chest.

Falling to _his_ knees, Roku felt as if a part of him were leaving. It seemed as if he couldn't feel his hands…and looking at them, he realized they were indeed disintegrating, falling to the ground in the form of smoke, fog, and mostly sand.

Slowly, he looked up at his killer-his arms were gone up to the elbow by now-and simply locked the man's gaze.

As his body was, quite literally, falling to pieces, he maintained that look until he blew away in the wind.

As his team ruggedly rose to their feet, the mysterious leader of the group sighed.


	2. Aftershocks

Author's Notes: Here it is, chapter two. Originally, this chapter was going to introduce a young Firebender by the name of Sam. Fortunately, that idea has been scrapped…for now. Anyway, I forgot to list out the disclaimer for the Prologue, so I apologize if I broke some unwritten tradition/law.

Thanks for the reviews (and alerts), this Fic is definitely goin' to get more complicated as time goes on…I figured it was time we got something besides a Shipping-Spree in the Avatar section.

Disclaimer(s): I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender. If I did, season 3 would have already been out by now :P

lol, let's get on with the show:

**Chapter One**; _Aftershocks_.

"…As you can see, from the video and audio recordings of Chief Warrant Officer Vince Hong, and a personal account and retelling from him, he and the Covert Operations "Backup" were the only survivors of the failed cloning and resurrection of Avatar Aang."

The man speaking, Colonel Howard Ross, finished his presentation to the HighIntel Brass. Ten of the greatest minds and leaders known to the human race, not one of them would be revealed in either name or rank by noon that day.

Standing at precisely six feet, five inches tall, Ross had his hands firmly clasped in the small of his back, and a military-verified crew cut atop his face.

Clearing his throat, Ross began again, "As of this morning, Hong has been sent to a military-backed hospital, where he will be given a debriefing and sent to rehabilitation for the next few months." He attempted to read some form of sympathy for the man from the gathered Brass, but their combined features revealed nothing.

An elderly man with a remotely basset-hound-like face spoke up, "what about the remains? Have they been recovered and taken care of?"

For the first time that day Ross smiled, though he kept it to himself, "yes sir, all debris of the…conflict have been disposed of. The 167th brigade, presenting security for the experiment, will now show up on all military lists as having been MIA in a battle with rogue Benders to the far south. A fictional battle, of course. But I'm sure it will not hurt the image of Benders in the eyes of the public."

A raven-haired woman to Ross' distant right crookedly inquired, "what of the quarantine zone? I take it none of our equipment survived the attack?"

He replied with a simple shake of the head.

The brass murmured amongst themselves for about five minutes, and then the same woman from before issued his leave.

Giving a crisp salute, Ross turned on his heel and left the room. He proceeded down the corridor, flashed his identification card to the silent guards at the elevator, and continued on his way.

Several uneventful minutes later, Ross was escorted to a helicopter-identical to the ones from the night before, only without the menacing machine gun turrets and missile pods.

Boarding said craft, it promptly flew off into the rising sun.

* * *

_A massive column of men adorned in crimson armor with black and gold motifs slowly marched across a field. The first rank was unarmed-they were the Benders of the army. Behind them was an incredible block of pikemen-they looked more like a phalanx of trees than men. Behind them still, an immense contingent of archers stood in a battle-ready stance, arrows nocked and eyes opened. Suddenly, an opposing-yet easily dwarfed-army of men in green and brown charged the first army, a flotilla of boulders crashing into the ranks of Fire Nation troops. Above them a single figure appeared-a man, with the clothes and tattoos of an Airbender. He was suspended from a strange, glider-like staff. He circled over the field of charging Earthbenders, and, landing, lifted an elephant-sized hunk of rock into the air, and hurled it into the midst of the Fire Nation army…crushing more than a few soldiers in the process._

_Meanwhile, despite having the element of surprise, the Earthbenders were slowly being both outclassed and outnumbered, for every man they defeated, a score of them would take his place! Several Earthbenders attempted a suicide tactic; combining their prowess, they opened up an abyss in the midst of the clashing lines, sending both themselves and thousands of others to their deaths._

_But it was not enough._

_Now outdistanced as well, the Earthbenders had to raise shields of stone where they would have thrown these rocks at their enemies, as it literally began to rain arrows-many of them accompanied by a blazing contrail._

_The wall was beginning to buckle, when the Avatar entered the fray._

_Announcing his arrival on the field of battle, Aang created a spinning dome of air, sending an entire regiment of swordsmen and Firebenders into the blistering sky. The dome began to fade; a furious barrage of flames escaped from inside of it, cooking soldiers alive in their own armor._

_The Earthbenders behind him began to cheer, and used their previous shield to bridge the abyss that had swallowed so many men that day. Just as they began to cross it, however, a bright light lit up the sky…the Fire Lord had come._

The light faded, and a middle-aged woman turned to her class. She opened her wrinkle-outlined mouth to speak, "Here, in the Battle by the Sea, is where they turning point came about for one hundred years of history." She paused; letting those words sink into the minds of her not-caring class. Lifting her head slightly at a mental quip, she sniffed quietly and continued, "at this point in the battle, Fire Lord Ozai entered the fray. Having captured the mystical properties of Sozin's Comet, he was more than a match for the Earth and Waterbenders allied against him, even with the leadership of Avatar Aang. They had a climactic duel," at this point the class perked up, "however, our current methods of holograms and visual technologies cannot provide a suitable visual of said battle." There were several-albeit unnoticed-moans of displeasure from the class, and the instructor continued on with her lecture/torture sequence, "Fortunately for us, the Avatar proved successful in his combat, tapping into previously unknown powers to cast the Fire Lord into the abyss, and he sealed it with a combination of the four elements via Bending. We will, however, show the Fire Nation army's retreat from the field of battle, by those warships that survived the Water Tribe's aquatic onslaught, that is."

As the closing stages of the battle played themselves out, the room's temperature increased by several degrees, prompting the instructor to reformat the climate control to a reasonable degree. Several of the more pale-skinned, dark-haired students in the room clenched their fists, and gritted their teeth.

Their day would come.


	3. Other Sides of the Spectrum

I'm back, sorry 'bout the long-ish wait, but I've been mulling over where I want to take this story, who I want to include, what message I want to get across. That, and the fact that I'm in the process of staging a massive (as in, including people from Marvel Comics to a fictional pirate saga) crossover for Halo Fanfiction-abit similar to Planet Terror, if you've ever had the fortune to read it.

Anyway…this chapter will feature coarse language, and (I would put a spoiler tag here, but if you've got this far you're obviously going to finish the story :P) computer-generated violence.

I can't recall whether or not I outlined it last chapter, but just to clarify, public opinion of Benders in this time is on par with that of normal people's of mutants in the X-Men franchise.

Oh, if a passage is italicized like this, then it symbolizes what the character we are viewing through is thinking. If it's single word, then it is used to signify the sound that word makes. Anything in between…I'm certain that you have the intelligence to decipher it's meaning there.

So…let's get on with the show!

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing! Whether it be Halo, X-Men, King of the Hill, Call of Duty, 1984, and especially Avatar.

**Chapter Two;** Other Sides of the Spectrum.

The world around Harley Smith exploded in a kaleidoscope of browns, grays, and lots of smoke and shrapnel.

Ducking, he tried to cram himself as far down in the trench as possible as another artillery shell impacted nearby.

Swearing under his breath, he viewed his options, and what he had to work with. There were four other men pinned down near him, for the most part unscathed-except for some bumps and bruises. Each of them had the training-issue assault rifles, cut-down, lighter versions of their military counterparts. This imposed a stark contrast to the bulky, dull-colored armor worn by the trainees.

_There's nothing we can do here…not enough guys to give covering fire; it's way too hot to turn anywhere…we'll have to charge 'em._

Upon this last thought, Harley (Carl to almost everyone except for his mother) called one of the other soldiers-in-training over to him, and gave the order to charge on his count.

Seeing the situation similarly, the other man, _what was his name…Raynord? Ah well, not like it really mattered…_to have grenades ready, and to throw them towards the enemy artillery as soon as each man had cleared the trench.

Mentally counting down from three, Carl popped up, vaulted over the trench, and hurled a grenade from his right hand towards unsuspecting troops, along with the other four men on his sides.

He then unclipped his assault rifle, and charged towards the opposing forces, gun blazing, backed up by his colleagues.

At this point, with the enemy dropping like flags, Carl was certain that he would go on from here to receive promotions, both socially and rank-wise, for his decisive charge in the training session. He would be the shining jewel of his class, the cream of the crop in the social ladder.

But it was not to be.

Tripping over an upturned rock, Carl's rifle-trigger still firmly held down under his finger-turned abruptly to the left, sending several dozen rounds into the head of one unfortunate Wesley-the man's last name escaped him-and their rag-tag firing position collapsed on itself.

Raynord, seeing his leader fall, attempted to turn back and help him, but the ground beneath his feet erupted into a miniature Saint Helens, and he was out of the battle. The other two fools were mowed down-one by the detonation of his own grenade-promptly.

Struggling to his feet, Carl could only cringe as an enemy soldier marched towards him, sidearm in hand.

The nondescript soldier pistol-whipped Carl on the jaw, his teeth crunching together like so many blocks of plaster.

Falling backwards, he was firmly seated against a boulder, and the opposing soldier lifted his gun to Carl's face, seven feet away.

Two words escaped the lips of the war-hardened soldier:

"You lose."

He pulled the trigger.

But, as his finger twitched to trigger the firing mechanism, the man's feet lost color-they morphed into a bizarre vertical graph, and slowly-at least, that's how it seemed to Carl-dissipated into thin air, along with the rest of the landscape, the tanks, and the entire army behind him. The startling effect continued up his body until only his torso, right hand-holding the gun-and head were left intact.

While this marvelous process was taking place, the bullet had been tearing a path towards Carl's left eye.

As the rest of the figure's body disintegrated, so too did the bullet.

An inch away from Carl's face, the bullet disappeared, and a combat training instructor pulled him from the ground.

* * *

All was serene in the neighborhood. Ordinary citizens stood outside, seemingly obsessed with their property, mowing, watering, preening their lawns. Middle-aged men washed equally aged (though in slightly more pristine condition) sports cars, with one unlucky soul hosing down a small red pickup, several of his friends nearby muttering variations of "yup" in a seemingly orchestrated fashion.

At least, that's how it would have been without the furious mob cascading down the cul-de-sac.

They had a singular target; a young man, now revealed to be an Earthbender, who had 'accidentally' collapsed a subway terminal.

Speaking of this 'young man', whose name happened to be Hai Kan, ducked just enough to avoid a brick thrown through the front window of his house. Angry shouts filtered in, and faces morphed in seeming agony peered in through the windows.

Kan ran down the hall, his bare feet staining the soft carpet, and skidded to halt as a resounding _boom_ heralded an attempt at breaking down his front door. Turning to the left, he grabbed a parcel of bread from atop the toaster, and stuffed it into his school-issue backpack. He proceeded to the refrigerator (another _boom_ accompanied his movement) and he grabbed a few water bottles, and a block of frigid cheddar.

Not having time to spare a glance, he could only hear the mob chanting, and a sudden volley of objects of all shapes and sizes crashed through the windows of his house. At this point he grabbed a package of sliced ham, and tossed it into his pack.

Suddenly, the door splintered and several men-one brandishing a handgun, another a wooden bat-poured into the house, the shrieks of the mob outside escalating.

Realizing it was time to go, Kan sprinted out the hall, his knee bashing painfully to the doorframe. He hurried to the back door, but mid-flight, he heard a coarse shout, and suddenly someone began shooting at him.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit," was all he could flounder to say as bullets impacted the wall behind him, reducing the oak shelf to sawdust and splinters.

He reached the laundry room, and the brilliant green of his backyard rose to meet him. Reaching for the door, it exploded as another bullet hit the windowpane, exploded into an incoherent cloud of smoke and superheated glass.

Diving through the door's remains, Kan somehow managed to raise an eight-foot wall of stone behind his exodus, which halted his pursuers in their tracks.

Pausing slightly to examine his surprising handiwork, Kan, now breathing quite heavily since the adrenaline left him, clambered up and over the wooden fence separating his family's property from their neighbor's.

Suddenly, a whining siren sounded in the air, as alien to this quaint neighborhood as the violent mob gorging in the street.

Several minutes of seemingly aimless walking later, Kan looked at the ground in front of his feet.

There was a manhole cover in the sidewalk.

"If the stories are true…" Kan murmured to himself, but then looked around. Seeing no one, he hefted the cover on it's side, and lowered himself into the tunnels below, bag in hand.


End file.
